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Hurricane Maria has crushed Puerto Rican farmers.

The devastation wiped out 80 percent of Puerto Rico’s agricultural production, according to Puerto Rico’s agriculture secretary, Carlos Flores Ortega. The New York Times visited farmer José A. Rivera after the winds flattened his plantain, yam, and pepper fields.

“There will be no food in Puerto Rico,” Rivera, told the Times. “There is no more agriculture in Puerto Rico. And there won’t be any for a year or longer.”

Food prices will surely rise on the island, although the loss of crops will not necessarily mean people will starve. Puerto Rico imports about 85 percent of its food. Even so, the storm damaged the infrastructure used to distribute imported food, like ports, roads, and stores.

On CNN, Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló pleaded for aid from Congress. “We need to prevent a humanitarian crisis occurring in America,” he said. FEMA and the Coast Guard are working in the territory.

Flores, the agriculture secretary, appeared to be looking for a silver lining. This may be a chance to rebuild the island’s agriculture so that it is more efficient and sustainable, he told the Times.

As climate change accelerates, we can expect the rate of disasters like this to accelerate as well.

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Hurricane Maria has crushed Puerto Rican farmers.

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Oil is spilling from trains, pipelines … and now barges

Oil is spilling from trains, pipelines … and now barges

Shutterstock

The Mississippi River in New Orleans.

The oil industry is a champion of innovation. When it comes to finding new ways of sullying the environment, its resourcefulness knows no bounds.

An oil-hauling barge collided with a vessel pushing grain in the Mississippi River on Saturday, causing an estimated 31,500 gallons of crude to leak through a tear in its hull. The accident closed 65 miles of the already disgustingly polluted waterway upstream from the Port of New Orleans for two days while workers tried to contain and suck up the spilled oil.

The accident highlighted a little-noted side effect of the continent’s oil boom. Not only is crude being ferried from drilling operations to refineries in leaky pipelines and explosion-prone trains — it’s also being moved over water bodies with growing frequency. Bloomberg reports:

“We’re facing the imminent risk of a barge disaster or a rail disaster” as more oil is shipped to the Gulf of Mexico for refining, Jonathan Henderson, a spokesman for the New Orleans-based Gulf Restoration Network, said by phone after attending a meeting with U.S. Coast Guard officials. …

Barge and tanker shipments of crude from the Midwest to the Gulf Coast jumped from virtually nothing in 2005 to 21.5 million barrels in 2012, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The U.S. Gulf received a record 4.9 million barrels of crude from the Midwest in October.

And if the Coast Guard gets its way and lets frackers ship their wastewater on barges, next up could be spills of radioactive liquid waste containing undisclosed chemicals. 


Source
Mississippi Oil Spill Highlights Risk of U.S. Oil Boom, Bloomberg

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Oil is spilling from trains, pipelines … and now barges

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BP stops cleanup in three Gulf states — and starts funding a new beachfront hotel

BP stops cleanup in three Gulf states — and starts funding a new beachfront hotel

BP’s oil-spill cleanup operations have formally wrapped up in three of the four states that were polluted following the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in 2010.

After more than three years of cleanup, that sounds like an occasion to party and then relax. But it isn’t. Not only has the Gulf Coast not recovered from the oil spill, but the hard work of environmental restoration has barely even begun. From the Associated Press:

The London-based oil giant said the Coast Guard has concluded “active cleanup operations” in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, but the work continues along 84 miles of Louisiana’s shoreline. …

The Coast Guard will continue responding to reports of oil washing up anywhere along the Gulf Coast. BP said it will take responsibility for removing any oil that came from its blown-out Macondo well. …

The director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Gulf of Mexico Restoration Campaign said there is still much work to be done including rapid shoreline assessment and cleanup after storms.

“As much as one million barrels of oil from the disaster remains unaccounted for, and tar mats and tar balls from the spill continue to wash up on the coast,” said David White. “Regardless of how our shorelines are monitored, BP must be held accountable for the cleanup. We cannot just accept oiled material on our beaches and in our marshes as the ‘new normal.’”

White’s complaints aside, the focus now moves to spending a few billion dollars from BP and Transocean on projects to restore wounded coastlines — like rebuilding salt marshes, improving wetlands, and building a hotel.

Wait, what?

Yes, building a hotel.

Some of the restoration money is planned to be spent in ways that have raised eyebrows among local environmentalists. From a May 28 story by NPR:

Earlier this month, Alabama’s Gov. Robert Bentley stood on a sugar white state park beach to announce plans for an $85 million lodge and conference center. The event had all the trappings of an economic development announcement. State lawmakers, local mayors and business owners were all smiles to hear that the Legislature had finally, after years of stalemate, given the go-ahead for a hotel on state park property near Gulf Shores, Ala. The state can contract with private companies to build and run the facility. What pushed the hotel through this year, as noted by Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey, is that BP is footing the bill.

“Without costing the taxpayers a dime,” Ivey said at the announcement earlier this month.

It wasn’t just the natural environment that suffered when BP’s well blew out. Fishermen, tourist operators, and regular folks who enjoy spending their weekends at the beach also took hits. So part of the restoration funding will go toward running advertising campaigns to woo back visitors, constructing boat ramps, and, well, building a hotel. But some local enviros are worried about the precedent.

Technically, [says Casi Callaway, director of Mobile Baykeeper], the state may be able to call a hotel restoration. But she says it makes her uneasy about how future monies to compensate for the BP oil spill might be allocated. “When the very first thing that’s supposed to be environmental is going to an economic project, that’s not OK,” Callaway says.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Pipeline struck by tug still burning, yards away from oil-laden barge

Pipeline struck by tug still burning, yards away from oil-laden barge

Coast GuardThis photo, taken Wednesday, shows how close the oil barge, on the left, is to the burning tug and pipeline. The barge contains 2,200 barrels of crude oil.

A tugboat and a gas pipeline continued to burn in Louisiana on Thursday — and connected to the burning tug is a barge laden with 2,200 barrels of crude oil, potentially ready to catch fire or spill.

The tug crashed into the liquid petroleum pipeline in Bayou Perot, 30 miles south of New Orleans, on Tuesday evening in shallow water after its crew steered into an area that vessels are not supposed to enter.

Not only was the no-go area clearly marked with white stakes, but the crew apparently plowed right over the warning stakes. ”The tug and barge was in the middle [of a marked pipeline area],” Coast Guard spokesman Tanner Stiehl told WWMT. “It had taken down some of the white stakes and was in the middle of that area.”

Miraculously, all of the barge’s crude has remained safely aboard so far, as emergency crews sprayed water over the barge to keep it cool and over the nearby flames. More than a dozen emergency response boats were floating near the fire on Thursday, with 40 emergency workers on hand ready to respond to a spill. A ring of floating absorbent boom was laid around the barge to help contain the oil if it leaks.

But nothing can be done to extinguish the blaze — officials are waiting for the contents of the severed liquid petroleum gas pipeline to burn themselves out. (Previous reports inaccurately stated that it was a natural gas pipeline.) The Associated Press reported on Wednesday:

The Coast Guard said pipeline owner Chevron shut off the flow of gas to the area, but what’s left in the 19-mile section of pipeline could fuel the fire until Thursday or later.

Petty Officer William Colclaugh said Chevron began a process Wednesday to inject nitrogen gas into the pipeline in hopes of extinguishing the blaze, but it was unclear how soon that might affect the fire.

An oil spill would wreak further havoc on fisheries and coastal ecosystems in an area still affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. The Coast Guard had previously said that Tuesday’s accident had triggered an oil spill. It now appears that the sheen the Coast Guard had spotted on the water surrounding the accident was not oil — it was a thick layer of ash from the blazing gas.

As emergency workers labored to protect the oil-laden barge from the flames on Thursday, questions were being asked about how the crew of the 47-foot tug Shanon E. Settoon could have drifted so far off course.

Unusually, the Coast Guard refused to say whether the tug boat crew had been tested for drugs and alcohol after the accident, as is standard practice. “We’re not releasing that information,” Stiehl told Grist. As many as four members of the tug boat’s crew were reportedly injured. The captain reportedly suffered burns to more than three-quarters of his body, which could have complicated normal toxicology testing procedures.

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Pipeline struck by tug still burning, yards away from oil-laden barge

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Shell gets massive, involuntary aid package from Alaska, U.S. Coast Guard, and you

Shell gets massive, involuntary aid package from Alaska, U.S. Coast Guard, and you

“I’ve been working this case relatively nonstop since the 27th.”

Petty Officer First Class David Mosley didn’t sound all that tired when I spoke with him yesterday, but, then, he’s a public affairs specialist, a professional. A few times he stumbled over his words, once or twice forgot specific numbers. On the whole, though, no problems as he walked me through the massive complement of U.S. Coast Guard staff and sea vessels and aircraft deployed to fix Shell’s mistake.

U.S. Coast Guard

Two weeks from yesterday, the Kulluk, a drilling rig managed by Noble Drilling and owned by Shell, broke free of its tow lines as tug boats struggled in inclement weather to move it away from the Alaskan shore. On Dec. 31, it ran aground within an important bird area on Kodiak Island. A unified command comprised of representatives of Shell, Noble, the Coast Guard, the state of Alaska, and local representatives spent the next week and half determining whether the rig was safe to move and, ultimately, moving it to a nearby harbor. Some 700 people were involved in the effort by the time it had been safely docked.

How many of that 700 were from the Coast Guard? “That’s a very good question,” Mosley told me. He noted that “the command center at Coast Guard Center Anchorage was very much involved in the unified command,” proving the point by listing just the people who came to mind:

Captain Mehler, the federal on-scene coordinator, all the way down to your storekeepers and yeomen and people like myself, public affairs specialists, who were all swept up and involved in this in some way. The people who provided support on Base Kodiak and Air Station Kodiak, moving gear around and making things happen on the base. Maintenance crews with the helicopters, the C-130s. You’ve got the crews that were involved with the Alex Haley. We had stationed the Coast Guard Cutter Hickory and the Coast Guard Cutter Spar, both of which are 225-foot buoy tenders that were activated and would have come out to the scene as needed.

Wikipedia

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter

Alex Haley.

The Alex Haley has a crew of 90, plus 10 officers and a four-person aircrew. The Spar and Hickory each have a complement of about 50 people. He continued:

We brought people in, whether it was our strike teams or other folks that came in from the lower 48, from California and as far away as the Carolinas. We brought in these folks that are specialized in responding to these situations. It was not only a large response locally, it was a far-reaching response.

Those folks from the Carolinas, for example, were media specialists, brought in to help Mosley handle the onslaught of questions about Shell’s latest Arctic mistake during a slow news week. The strike teams are oil spill response experts, on stand by in case the worst case happened. (It didn’t.)

Mosley explained who foots the bill for a scenario like this. There’s a federal fund, the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, that was set up after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. The fund is financed by a per-barrel excise tax on imported fuel as well as “cost recovery” from at-fault companies and any civil penalties imposed on a company responsible for a spill. It’s not clear how that money might be applied here; Mosley suggested that would be “hammered out” with Shell.

When it comes to search-and-rescue, Mosley says not to expect money back. “I have yet to see an incident in which we do search and rescue that we look for reimbursement,” he said. “That’s why the taxpayers pay us to do our jobs.” Among the Coast Guard’s search-and-rescue efforts in this case? Three round-trip Jayhawk helicopter flights out to the Kulluk, each trip rescuing six members of the rig’s 18-person crew. Bringing people back onto the rig to test its integrity. Overflights to assess damage. The Coast Guard also reached out to the Department of Defense to borrow two Chinook helicopters to transport equipment. All of that? On your tab.

Kullukresponse

Ski-equipped U.S. Army Chinook helicopters.

When the unified command first set up shop after the Kulluk‘s grounding, it was in a Shell office in Anchorage. As the number of people involved in the response swelled, the group decamped to a nearby hotel. Among those who made the trip was Shannon Miller, who works for Alaska’s division of spill prevention and response. Probably since its role was more modest, Miller had a better estimate of how many employees of the state of Alaska worked with the command. Twenty-two, she guessed — but that doesn’t include other resources, like the emergency towing package provided by the state.

Kullukresponse

The emergency towing system hangs on a pendant below an Air Station Kodiak MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter.

Alaska has a strategy to get its money back. The costs the state accrues are internally invoiced and calculated, and Shell will be sent a bill for whatever portion of those invoices the state feels is appropriate. (One can assume that this, too, will be “hammered out.”) The process, Miller expects, will take months. There is also an emergency response fund that can allocate money for the incident. The fund collects revenue through a two-cent-per-barrel surcharge on oil produced in the state, as well any as money recovered from companies at fault.

I reached out to Shell in both Houston and Alaska to gauge the company’s willingness to absorb costs incurred by public entities. Neither location made a representative available to answer questions by deadline. [See update at bottom.] The company did clear up one gauzy point, albeit to other outlets. As we reported earlier this week, Shell was motivated to move the Kulluk when it did to avoid paying tax to Alaska on the rig in the new year. From United Press International:

[Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)], ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said he questioned claims made by Shell that Kulluk was towed from its grounding [site] because of inclement weather.

“Reports that financial considerations rather than safety may have factored into Shell’s considerations, if true, are profoundly troubling,” he said in a letter to Shell Oil President Marvin Odum.

Shell spokesman Curtis Smith told Bloomberg News that avoiding a Jan. 1 tax issue in the state was “a consideration” but “not among the main drivers for our decision to begin moving the Kulluk.”

Shell made a bad bet. Hoping in part to avoid an estimated $6 million tax bill,  it decided to risk the stormy weather on Dec. 27. The bet didn’t pay off.

Lucky for the company, it wasn’t only betting with its own money. It was gambling yours, too.

Update: Shell’s Curtis Smith provided this statement by email in response to my questions:

We will live up to all of our obligations related to the response and recovery of the Kulluk. Throughout this incident, we have spared nothing in terms of personnel or assets to reach this safe outcome.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Shell gets massive, involuntary aid package from Alaska, U.S. Coast Guard, and you

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Shell’s Alaska mishap has a big PR cost — and a big cost to taxpayers

Shell’s Alaska mishap has a big PR cost — and a big cost to taxpayers

Even at 6:30 a.m. Alaska time today, three hours before sunrise, there was a hum of activity at the unified command center coordinating the response to Shell’s breakaway drilling rig off Kodiak Island on the state’s southern coast. The command — coordinating the efforts of Shell, the Coast Guard, the state, Noble Corporation (the drilling contractor), and local officials — is responsible for figuring out how badly the 28,000-ton Kulluk is damaged, if it’s leaking any of its 143,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and how it can be towed back out to sea. Three days after the rig broke free of two tugboats in bad weather and ran aground, only one of those questions can be answered: It isn’t leaking fuel. Yet.

Hoping to figure out the extent of the Coast Guard’s role in recovery — how many of the 600 people working on the response are employees of the agency, or of the state of Alaska — I called the Coast Guard station in Anchorage this morning, and was quickly referred to the unified command. When I called there, I spoke with Destin Singleton over clamorous background noise. Singleton is the spokesperson for the recovery effort — and a Shell public relations staffer.

For what little progress has been made in assessing damage to the rig, the command has put together a pretty thorough communications system. The effort has a website, KullukResponse.com, a Twitter feed, and a page of photos on Flickr. Singleton, a PR professional, didn’t offer much information beyond what’s available on the website. So here’s the latest update:

A team of five salvage experts boarded the grounded drilling unit Kulluk [yesterday] to conduct a structural assessment to be used to finalize salvage plans, currently being developed by the Kulluk Tow Incident Unified Command.

The five-member team was lowered to the Kulluk by a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter at about 10:30 [yesterday] morning. The assessment lasted about three hours. A helicopter safely hoisted the team from the drilling unit at about 1:30 p.m. The Coast Guard helicopter and crew also delivered a state-owned emergency towing system to the Kulluk, which will be used during salvage operations.

It’s clear that the Coast Guard is playing a significant role in efforts at recovery. The video at the top of the page is from one agency flyover of the rig. But Singleton wasn’t able to (or wouldn’t) say how many Coast Guard employees were involved, nor was she able to say how many of the people working on the effort were employed by Shell. (Save one, that is: herself.)

There’s no doubt that the effort is a complex one, requiring interagency coordination and careful consideration of safety risks. One of the main reasons that activists have been concerned about the prospect of drilling in the region is unstable, unmanageable weather like that currently impeding the recovery. But it’s also clear that Shell recognizes the public relations risk of its inability to control its drilling vessel. According to Politico, several environmental organizations plan to unveil a push to freeze drilling in the region in light of Shell’s ongoing problems.

Shell’s mistakes are costing it an enormous amount of money even before a single drop of oil has been extracted in the region. And it’s costing us money, too, though exactly how much isn’t clear — and the company isn’t saying.

U.S. Coast GuardRear Adm. Thomas Ostebo, commander, 17th Coast Guard District and D17 Incident Management Team commander, observes the conical drilling unit Kulluk from an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter during a second overflight Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Something is leaking from the Deepwater Horizon site, but it’s not clear what

Something is leaking from the Deepwater Horizon site, but it’s not clear what

The Deepwater Horizon is the gift that keeps on giving. Usually, that gift is more oil. Right now, though, perhaps because of the holidays, it’s leaking something unknown. It’s a special present that will reveal itself on Christmas, maybe! That’s fun. Thanks, BP.

From CBS News:

An “unidentified substance inconsistent with oil” is emitting from several areas of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig wreckage, but no sources of leaking oil were identified. That’s according to the Coast Guard, which oversaw BP’s recent week-long mission to inspect the undersea wells and wreckage from the 2010 explosion.

The exact content of the leaking substance and how much is coming out is one mystery. But if it’s not oil, then it means the source of recurring oil sheens that have recently been spotted around the Deepwater Horizon site remains unknown.

The expression “unidentified substance inconsistent with oil” leaves a lot of leeway for what it might be. Pepsi, maybe? Hair gel? Possibly footballs? Is it stardust? Exposed Kodak film from the 1960s? Maybe it’s donuts? Is it blood? I bet it’s blood. Creeeepy.

But, seriously? What could it actually be? This is ominous:

The Coast Guard said BP’s main Macondo well was observed during the subsea operation and found to be secure. Two relief wells, the riser pipe and the previously leaking containment dome were also to be re-examined, but the press release made no mention of them and the Coast Guard declined to answer further questions.

This is how horror movies start. A hasty press conference, a quick statement that something unknown, unprecedented is happening, a refusal to be more specific. The uniformed government agents step away from the mic and out of the room leaving behind confused and quizzical reporters.

In other words: We were right and it was blood. And the holiday BP is recognizing isn’t Christmas, it’s Halloween.

Source

Coast Guard: “Unidentified substance” leaking from BP’s Deepwater Horizon, CBS News

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Something is leaking from the Deepwater Horizon site, but it’s not clear what

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An oil spill at a bird sanctuary caps Staten Island’s terrible year

An oil spill at a bird sanctuary caps Staten Island’s terrible year

For some reason, the fossil fuel industry has it out for Staten Island. First, Superstorm Sandy brought a 14-foot storm surge, worsened by warmed, raised seas. And now, an oil spill, just offshore.

From The New York Times:

Oil from a barge spilled into the waters off Staten Island, spreading to a bird sanctuary on an island in Newark Bay, the Coast Guard said on Saturday.

Workers placed a boom on the surface of the water to contain the oil, added absorbent materials and notified the authorities, [Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer Erik] Swanson said.

The oil was coming from one of the Boston 30’s tanks, which was carrying 112,000 gallons. The barge is owned by Boston Marine Transport of Massachusetts.

According to the Coast Guard’s most recent update, 156,000 gallons of oil/water mixture has been recovered.

Gothamist has more on the birds.

[The spill] has affected at least 15 birds, but authorities say the damage has largely been contained. “Tri-state bird and wildlife experts are walking the beaches on Shooters Island to survey the birds that have been impacted, and so far only 15 out of the nearly 3,000 birds that have been sighted have been stained by oil,” Coast Guard spokesman Mike Hanson said this morning. “The oil might stain the bird, but it has no significant impact on its life.”

Hanson said that the wildlife experts determined that the birds were not affected to the point that they needed to be retrieved and cleaned.

There’s an advantage to having an oil spill — leak, really — within the boundaries of a major city: It’s far easier to swoop in a contain it. (Those 15 birds might be less sanguine.)

Only 13 more days in 2012, Staten Island. Here’s looking forward to putting a bad year behind you.

marc-flores

Sunset over Staten Island

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Fracking companies want to ship wastewater by barge, since boats never spill

Fracking companies want to ship wastewater by barge, since boats never spill

Over the summer, ProPublica revealed that the wastewater produced through the fracking process — primarily water mixed with salt and who-knows-what chemicals — was often stuffed into over-pressure wells, and that an unknown number of those wells are leaking. Fracking companies stroked their chins and said, “Hm,” and came up with a proposal: Well then, why don’t we ship the wastewater in barges on rivers before we stuff it into the ground?

gb_packards

A barge carries environmentally friendly coal up the Ohio River.

From PublicSource:

The shale gas drilling industry wants to move its wastewater by barge on rivers and lakes across the country. But the U.S. Coast Guard, which regulates the nation’s waterways, must first decide whether it’s safe. …

The Coast Guard has been considering whether to allow the industry to use the waterways for about a year, according to [Commander Michael Roldan, chief of the Coast Guard’s Hazardous Material Division], who said the question came up when the Marine Safety Unit Pittsburgh — the local office of the Coast Guard — called the Washington office to clarify whether bulk transport was allowed after Marcellus Shale drillers began making inquiries.

The Coast Guard’s decision would affect more than Pittsburgh’s iconic three rivers. Nearly 12,000 miles of waterways could be open to these waterborne behemoths, each carrying 10,000 barrels of wastewater.

Of course it’s safe, Coast Guard! Jeez. I challenge you to name one time when the fossil fuel industry has transported fluids by ship and anything bad has happened. (Here is a list of 140 of them.) And it’s not like you have scientists saying anything could go wrong, except Benjamin Stout, a biology professor at Wheeling Jesuit University, who told PublicSource, “Oh, crap. A lot of things could go wrong.”

A barge accident would be a “massive catastrophe,” said Steve Hvozdovich, Marcellus campaign coordinator for Clean Water Action, a national environmental advocacy organization.

“It’s not just a contamination of a waterway,” Mr. Hvozdovich said. “You’re talking about the contamination of the drinking water supply for about half a million people. … It seems like a very bad idea.”

But industry officials and transportation experts counter that other industrial materials, some toxic, are moved on barges now. They include chlorine, hydrochloric acid and anhydrous ammonia. Why should the drilling industry be treated differently? they ask.

Yes, yes, good argument. Why shouldn’t we be allowed to do this dangerous thing when so many other people are? It’s the corporate version of, “But all the other kids are doing it!” To which the best response should be, “Well, fracking company, if all the other kids spilled toxic fluids into a waterway serving as a source of drinking water and were subsequently sued for millions or billions of dollars in addition to having to spend millions or billions on clean up, would you do it too?” (And the fracking companies would probably respond with an enthusiastic, “Yes!”)

One thing that might hold up the Coast Guard’s analysis: No one is sure how much wastewater we’d be talking about. So let’s make a deal: We agree to allow shipping by barge, as long as the amount does not exceed that which could be held in the barge captain’s mouth for the duration of the journey. Government regulation at its finest.

Source

Shale drillers eager to move wastewater on barges, PublicSource

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Fracking companies want to ship wastewater by barge, since boats never spill

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